Live Streaming and Webcams

It was recently mentioned to me that Livestream now has a mobile app for iPads and such.  The question was, can we use this with the NRMPS Livestream accounts.  Well here's the email;

Chris,

I see from reviews that it appears we can generate livestream broadcasting on iPads.

Is that right?

Is it worth working on?

Do you recommend trying or recommend against trying to do so?

I found your instructions on shared Google Drive, but it starts with "buy a camera," which led to the above questions.

Thanks,

This seems to be a growing topic, so I thought it might be helpful to share my reply..

Keen,

The Livestream app is for personal Livestream accounts.  It will not work with our corporate account.

Staff are welcome to create a personal Livestream account and use the app, however I would strongly suggest Google Hangouts On Air instead.  It's free, they already have a Google account, and there are far more useful features with it over the Livestream product.

Here's my take on webcams listing them from worst to best;

• (Just okay to use) - Mobile devices including smart phones and iPads.  Generally the image quality while streaming on these devices is poor.  Sound is compromised by the placement and movement of your hand on the device.  If handheld, the image is shaky exasperating the already poor quality.
• (Better) - Built in webcams.  Usually the image quality is good.  Especially on newer laptops in the system such as the MacBook Air and MacBook Pro.  Sound is good but you still need to be mindful of making noises near the mic with your hands. (Take off any wrist jewelry).  Video is good but still shaky if you are holding the laptop with your hand.
• (Very Good) - An HD External Webcam.  This is the preferred device for streaming.  The image quality is very good.  The sound quality is very good and in some cases in stereo.  It's portable and easy to use.  You're not tied down to your laptop or mobile device, in other words, you have more freedom to setup the camera any way you like.  Most models come with a threaded hole for mounting on a tripod or other standard camera mount.  << Very handy feature for the classroom >>

My personal suggestion is the Logitech c920, but any of the Logitech or Microsoft HD webcams would be a good choice.  If you're getting a lot of interest in streaming and you think it would be helpful, Jeff and I could put together a presentation on Google Hangouts On Air.  Just let us know.

Google Drive for Teachers with ‘How-to’ video links

Google has tripled free storage space, across Gmail, Google+ and Drive, bringing the total to 30GB. This is a serious move by Google as it places the company at the forefront of cloud based solutions with institutions working to tight financial constraints. Having turned to Google Drive as my main storage facility, I thought I would highlight some advantages of using the platform. (Please click on the links for further explanation.)

Google-drive-for-teachers-with-how-to-video-links

Gmail Tip: Clean out your Inbox by archiving old mail

Does your Inbox have more that 100 messages? 500 messages? Maybe even thousands? If so, you've got a case of Inbox Bloat! There’s really no reason to keep all that email in your Inbox. It’s much easier to archive your old messages.

Why? Archiving helps you:

• Better manage your Inbox by keeping it neat, tidy, and uncluttered.
• Reduce your stress level. Many people tend to feel overwhelmed when their Inbox is full of old messages. By reducing your Inbox to only new messages, or messages you need to deal with soon, your workload doesn't seem so insurmountable.
• Have a sense of accomplishment. Think about it - if your Inbox contained only a few messages, wouldn't you feel like you accomplished something?

Remember, you can always get back to any message you archived, either by going to your All Mail label or simply performing  a search. If you’re not sure how archiving works in Gmail, here’s some information that should help: What is archiving?

1. Search for old messages

So one tactic for cleaning out your Inbox is to get rid of all messages. To begin, see how many messages you currently have in your Inbox by looking at the top left of your message list. Looks like we have 228 messages!


Next, decide how old a message should be before you archive it. For our example, we’ll search for all messages in our Inbox that are older than 30 days. You can easily do this using keyword searches. To search for a specific date, enter before:yyyy/mm/dd as in before:2011/10/1. To concentrate only on messages in your Inbox, enter in:inbox. Our search would therefore look like this:

2. Archive the old messages

In the search results below, we see that 145 messages matched the search. To quickly archive all these messages:

1. Click the box to select all messages. This selects only messages in the current view, which here is only 20 messages. This would be ok if all messages returned from the search fit in this window. But since there are more messages than can be displayed...
2. Click Select all conversations that match this search to select the other messages, too.
3. Once all your results are selected, click the Archive button to move them to your archive.

3. Archive messages you’ve already read

Going back to your Inbox, you should now notice a lot fewer messages. That certainly seems more manageable! But, there are probably still messages you’ve already read that you might as well archive, too. To do that, let’s do another search - this time for all messages in your inbox (in:inbox) that you’ve already read (is:read). As such, your search would look like this:


When you get these results, perform the same steps as above to archive them.  (Remember to check the Select all conversations that match this search box, if you have more results than fit in the current view.)

There you are. Your Inbox is clean and tidy. Don’t you feel better? As you can see below, we were able to reduce our Inbox to 6 messages. Your results will, of course, vary.

One final tip: Archive as you go!

Finally, here’s a tip to help keep your Inbox from any future bloat. When you are replying to an email clicking Send & Archive sends your reply and automatically archives the message, all in one fell swoop! By contrast, clicking Send would simply send the message while the original would remain in your Inbox.

Email Tips: Clean Up Your Inbox with a Google Apps Script

Email is undoubtedly important—and at the same time, it can be a huge time drain depending on how much email you receive a day. And if your email inbox is anything like mine, well, it’s a jungle. Ready to tidy things up a bit? We stumbled on a Google Apps script that can help you better manage your Gmail inbox—no apps or extensions required.

We live our lives on a schedule (or try to, anyway)—so why not apply the same philosophy to your inbox? The Google Apps Script lets you automatically archive or delete old emails that are clogging up your inbox based on a schedule you create. The result? Time-based events that will move, mark or label messages—and you don’t even have to open your mail client!

I can hear your excitement. You’re ready to set it up, aren’t you? Let’s dive in with a hypothetical example. Say you want to get rid of deals, promotional emails or notifications that are two days old. To accomplish this, you’ll need to follow two steps:

1. Create a “delete me” Gmail filter and populate the search options to catch your semi-spam as it arrives.
2. Create a script that will delete all messages from the “delete me” label older than two days.  Once your filter has been created, go to https://script.google.com and create a blank project. You’ll enter the following code, as written on John Day’s blog–head there to copy and paste the script.

Notice that, in the second line, you have the option to change the number of delay variables to specify how many days should pass before that particular matched message will be deleted from your inbox.

When you’ve filled in the variables, save the script, name your project and click Run. After that, Google will ask you to authorize the script to access your Gmail account. Your final step is the schedule the interval at which you want the script to run. Simply go to the Resources menu and select your desired interval.

Now that you’ve cleaned up older emails, what about the rest of your inbox? Don’t worry—there’s a script for that! You can easily archive older emails from your inbox using the Google Script here:

https://script.google.com/d/1FqkoGz0qhBxBfu2dbJMGL8yo-larautrN7ASJLHrGTxqkQtQNPEDX7CH/edit?usp=sharing

Simply copy and paste the script into https://script.google.com, specify your intervals and you’re set!

A quick note? If you want to clean up thousands of email messages, know that it will take time for the script to fully work. If you’d rather tackle your inbox in smaller batches, follow John’s steps to process email threads in groups of 100.

What do you think? Ready to give Google Apps Script a try? 

Research Without Leaving Your Document

Google Research Tool

The Research tool makes it easy to add information from the web to your documents and presentations. To access the tool:

• Select the Research option from the Tools menu.
• Use the keyboard shortcut (Ctrl + ⌘ + Shift + I on a Mac, Ctrl + Alt + Shift + Ion a PC).
• Right-click on a specific word and select 

Research.The Research tool will appear along the right-hand side of your document or presentation. You can start a search by typing into the search bar. You can narrow your search to specific types of results (e.g. images, quotations) by using the drop-down menu in the search bar.

Researching different types of information relevant to your document or presentation

When conducting a search, the Research tool will show you different types of results — web results, images, quotations, maps, reviews, personal results, and more.

Web Results

Under the web results category, you’ll find a number of websites related to your search. If you select one of these results, you’ll see several options:

• Select Preview to see a preview of the website. Click on the site link at the top of the preview pane to open this page in a separate window, or click the arrow on the left edge to close the preview.
• Select Insert link to add a link to the website into the body of your document.
• Select Cite to create a footnote citation of this web result within the body of your document.

Images

Images will appear in the general search, as well as an image search. Narrow your search results to only images by selecting “Images” from the drop-down menu in the search bar.

Quotations

Narrow your search results to only quotations by selecting “Quotes” from the drop-down menu in the search bar. Once you have selected the quotation you’d like to use in your document, click Insert to add it to your document with a footnote citation (or linked to the author’s name in a presentation).

Article Citations

Narrow your search results to only articles by selecting “Scholar” from the drop-down menu in the search bar. Once you have selected an article you’d like to read or reference, click on that entry in the search results. You will see a Web or PDF hyperlink in the upper left-hand corner of the entry that will take you to a web or PDF version of the article itself. You will see a Cited by hyperlink in the upper right-hand corner of the entry, showing how many times the article has been cited, that will direct you to the Google Scholar list of sources that have cited this article. Clicking on either of these links will open the result in another window.
To insert an article citation into your document, select the article and click Cite. In presentations, you may insert a link to the article by pressing Insert.

Places

When conducting a search in the Research tool for a geographic location, your search results may include a map. You can edit this map by selecting Edit and then zooming in/out or dragging the map. Once you have the exact map image you’d like to include in your document, click Insert. You can also drag and drop the map image into your document.

Dictionary

Use the Research tool's dictionary to search for definitions, synonyms, and usage examples. If you don't already have the Research tool open, you can access the dictionary by clicking the Tools menu and then selecting Define.

Links to short video tutorials:

Using Google docs for easy Research
from Kirk Magill on Vimeo

Google Docs "Research Tool"
by gogrovo on YouTube


Google Docs "Research Tool"
on Grovo.com

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